The Cross of Mithras Vol. 1: EOD Operation Welcome to Hell (84 page)

  “So what happened next?” Taylor asked.

  “When they got very close to learning the purpose of those androids High Command ordered ACR-Labs to shut down the project because High Command was taking over. McCloud was captured and for some unknown reason… joined the conspirators. Since the police was no longer pursuing Blake, Dolton hired him to replace McCloud. Blake, out of revenge, started to investigate why did McCloud joined the conspirators. She was then ordered to leave with all documents and head to Tyos Prime were in all likelihood she is still there.” McIntyre said.

  “Not any more.” Mad Dawg said.

  “So why did the Council liquidated Tyos Prime?” Vaistll asked.

  “According to Big Joe (Joseph smiled when he heard that) the EOD found the Wol’ga’con Imperial Forces.” Mad Dawg responded.

  “Who are they?” McIntyre asked.

  “Captain Adnrwal’s species.” Taylor responded.

  “All of us are trapped here and unless we fully cooperate with each other there is a strong possibility that we will die. It is obvious that they will not use a fleet of warships to destroy this ship, so they must have something else in mind. It is paramount that we found out how they are going to achieve that and defeat them. The answers can be found out at Captain Dawson’s base. Colonel Blackburn committed suicide after his defeat at the hands of Task Force ZH-3C.” Lenkov said.

  “Good. One less scumbag, no offensive, to kill.” McIntyre said.

  “None taken. You know Captain Adnrwal, sooner or later your team would have found that Ultra 3X laboratory and that would have been a big mistake.” Lenkov said.

  “How so?” Vaistll asked.

  “We were kept in the dark about who protects it. It was not Colonel Blackburn. We know that it is neither protected by androids, let alone Dragon Clones. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that it is protected by the Demon Xs.” Lenkov said.

  “So what do you want us to do?” Vaistll asked.

  “We need you to go to that laboratory and find any Intel that can shed some light on the Council’s plan. Mad Dawg agreed to eliminate Captain Dawson. However, because of his injuries and since…” Omori was saying.

  “Now hold on a minute! Those are MY boys and girls that you are talking about! Nobody commands them except for me!” Mad Dawg angrily said.

  “So be it. Then I guess we’re going to have to have McIntyre command a Dragon Clone Commando Unit to provide protection for Captain Adnrwal.” Omori responded.

  “What Intel do you have on that Ultra 3X laboratory?” Taylor asked.

  “It has one of those type of transmitters that is design to be linked up to other transmitters. The type that can cover half the galaxy and who’s signal cannot be blocked. Now here’s the interesting part: there is only one transmitter. The question is, why? It’s useless without the other transmitters. So why only one? There is no indication that they were building any other transmitters. Once again, why not?” Omori was saying.

  “There is an air field and a Vehicular Robotics Base nearby. There is a large underground facility but we don’t know what it is used for. However, I strongly believe that it’s a barracks since it’s distance is relative to the air base and  the VRB. So you see captain, if you and your team went to that laboratory than you would have been killed off.” Lenkov said.

  “If any of you attempt to betray us than the Dragon Clones will kill you.” Omori remarked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that.” Taylor mentioned.

  “It’s not us who should worry.” Omori responded.

  Ramirez, who kept quiet because he dreaded being on a EOD ship, finally spoke up. “What’s in it for us when we cooperate?”

  “Minus the weapons system, Galactic Prime is being repaired. If you fully cooperate with us… you can board the ship and go your own way while we will go another.” Omori responded.

  “Any questions?” Lenkov asked everyone. “Dismissed.” He said when nobody said anything.

(6)

  Omori finally received the data from Vosler. Over the next several hours she did research and tried her best to decrypt the message. When she was finished she was mentally fatigued. She immediately contacted Lenkov, Mad Dawg, McIntyre, Vaistll, Taylor and Ramirez and asked them to meet her in the Conference Room on the bridge.

  “What did you wanted to see us about?” Lenkov asked Omori.

  “Earlier in the day I received a message from Captain Vosler. It contained encrypted messages which were nothing more than orders from different hierarchies within the EOD. The orders are not important but the original source of the orders are. It is also the reason why I wanted all of you here.” Omori said. She then looked at Vaistll and said, “Especially you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you’ve been with Project 21 the longest so I figured that you might be able to recognize the encrypted source. I also wanted a second opinion to make certain that I interpreted it correctly.” Omori responded. She then gave Vaistll a PDA with the encrypted message on it.

  “Hydox’ul nonyous yddta (he-doc ll [as in all] no-knee-ooze e-da-ta)!” Vaistll angrily said.

  “What does that mean?” Lenkov asked.

  “It means ‘holy fucking shit.’”

  “Who sent the order?” McIntyre asked Vaistll.

  “The Founder of the EOD.” Vaistll responded. It shocked everyone.

  “What!?” Ramirez almost screamed.

  “I thought that he was dead.” Taylor said.

  “Apparently not.” Mad Dawg said.

  “So why did you wanted us to know that?” Vaistll asked Omori.

  “When your people leaves… what are you going to do with that knowledge? And therefore, what will Project 21 do? And how would the EOD counter whatever Project 21 does?” Omori responded.

To Know Fear

(1)

  It was 06:00 hours and Mad Dawg just woke up. He then took a shower, shaved and eat breakfast. He wanted to spend some time with his old friend to catch up on things. He knew McIntyre well enough to know that he would ask questions that are related to the mission and not to, “catch up on things.” God that always irked Mad Dawg. Can’t McIntyre just for once put the mission aside and talk to him like a friend? Maybe this time it will be different, Mad Dawg thought to himself.

  At 10:00 hours Mad Dawg left and headed over to see McIntyre. (He would have left at 08:00 hours but he knew that McIntyre is not a morning person.) Before he got there he received a message telling him to come to sickbay. Mad Dawg didn’t feel like going and have to go through more hand therapy so he asked if it could wait. The doctor then told him that no it couldn’t wait. When he got to sickbay he saw that Omori was waiting for him. Mad Dawg only smiled when he saw her because he knew that those robotic helper hands are finally coming off.

  When the Marines first arrived on the, The Hammer of Doom, they were taken to the barracks which was unoccupied and could hold all of them. A Light Battle Cruiser has two barracks, a Medium Battle Cruiser has four and a Heavy Battle Cruiser has six. The barracks are designed to transport personnel and can hold 200 personnel per each barracks. Because of the size of a Battle Cruiser the barracks also has sound damping system and other amenities to prevent the crew station there from getting on each other nerves.

  From the moment that the Marines first arrived, Lenkov kept the Marines constantly busy by training them to look like, talk like, walk like, act like and as Lenkov put it, to piss like the EOD Self-Defense Force. For the first few days the Marines spent a good part of each day training and studying until they got everything right. After they got a satisfactory score Lenkov gave them 24 hours of R&R. Lenkov then had them train for the tactic of finishing off Captain Dawson. It was that training that took them the longest, and the hardest, to master.

  Mad Dawg’s Marines started to see Lenkov, not as an enemy, but as a damn good officer. Someone that they would follow to hell and back. By the time that Task Force ZH-3C got on board the Marines look like, and almost acted like, they were a part of the crew. The Marines interacted with the crew and made friends with the crew. It was as if though they had always been a part of the crew. It was a real shock for Task Force ZH-3C when they got on board. They didn’t know what to make of it.

  For Mad Dawg it was different. Mad Dawg, McIntyre and Taylor knew that when the Marines got on board and interacted with the crew, at first a fight might break out and then there would be peace. The three of them knew that it was human nature for the Marines, especially twenty something year olds, to behave that way. But once they are separated for a long enough time period, both the Marines and the crew would go back to being enemies.

  Up until he was trusted (a few days after he arrived), a guard was posted at Mad Dawg’s door and accompanied him wherever he went. On the day that Mad Dawg no longer needed the guard a EOD Information Specialist came in to give him the rules of the ship. Not once did Mad Dawg ever give them any trouble. Off-and-on he would go exploring the ship out of curiosity. A couple of times he got lost. Nobody said anything when he went on one of his “trips,” since he would be taken to Andromeda. In spite of that, his whereabouts were still monitored in case he was spying.

  Mad Dawg enjoyed his time on The Hammer of Doom. First time that he was ever on a EOD ship, let alone a Heavy Battle Cruiser. It caused him to wish that he spent part of his career serving on a Heavy Battle Cruiser. For those who monitored his actions it appeared to them that Mad Dawg was nothing more, or less, than a tourist. Although there were places on the ship that he couldn’t go (he never asked if he could go), the ship was still big enough to satisfy his curiosity. Not once did he ever get taken into the EOD world and wanted to join it. In his heart he is, and always will be, a Marine.

  “Who is it?” McIntyre asked when he heard his doorbell ring.

  “It’s the police, open up.” Mad Dawg responded.

  “You’re out of uniform officer.” McIntyre said after he opened the door and saw who it was.

  Mad Dawg came in and held up his hands expecting that McIntyre might say something nice. But he didn’t say anything much to Mad Dawg’s disappointment. McIntyre wasn’t being insensitive, it’s just the way that he is.

  “Well, you haven’t change one bit.” Mad Dawg said after McIntyre didn’t say anything. Mad Dawg then said, “I just got those robotic helper hands off and you don’t even say anything.”

  “What would like me to say then?”

  “You could at least say that you’re happy for me, or at least pretend to be nice.”

  “Yeah, then both of us could sit around the camp fire and sing kumbyeya. It’s war. When you put on the uniform… you will become a causality.”

  “Not everyone gets wounded in war you know.”

  “What, you came here for a pep talk or something? You want me to pat you on the back and say that it will get better. Look around you. Look at where you are at.”

  “Now hold on a minute! You’re the one who suggested that Task Force ZH-3C should surrender! Not me!” Mad Dawg said. He then shook his head and looked away in disappointment.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “What!!? I came here to see you! You asshole! God you’re impossible.”

  “Yeah, it takes one to know one.”

  “What happened to you down there?”

  “What do you think? That I was down there throwing a party?”

  “Why are you being so nasty to me?” Mad Dawg said. McIntyre didn’t say anything. “I haven’t seen you in a long time and here you go treating me like shit.” Mad Dawg added. He was so upset that he was fixing to leave.

  “When my team and I…” McIntyre was saying. “…landed on Golden Hyperion there was 35 of us. We went to the same places that Task Force ZH-3C did. Off-and-on we would find survivors. By the time that we got to Bordeaux our numbers was 212 – 109 Space Core, 18 Special Forces, 50 Marines and no wounded.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “When we were at Bordeaux we saw airplanes of a unknown type go over head. We then heard them make an attack run somewhere in the city of Blue Tasmania. When we got to the river we learned that those planes destroyed the bridges. We then saw a couple of Black Knight KC-144S’ (an EOD fighter jet) make an attack run. We thought that they were coming for us. After we found a place to hide we saw them drop some bombs in the river turning it lavender. Off-and-on we would hear those Black Knights drop a bomb in another part of the river. Once, I swear that one of the pilots saw us, but did nothing.

  While we were in downtown Blue Tasmania we heard someone transmitting a distress call from the building that I took Brewster, Caparzo and Venito to. When we got to the building we learned that they were eight EOD scientists and nineteen EOD Self-Defense Force members. They then told us that the Dragonfly virus was recently created to kill the Demon Xs in case they get loose. They also told us that the airport within the city was being used to bring the Demon Xs to the moon. They said that a rumor implied that there was a underground bunker located at the airport that was keeping between 500 to a 1,000 Demon Xs. And then they mentioned…” McIntyre was saying.

  “Mentioned what?”

  “That either the Demon Xs escaped from the airport or was released.”

  “Do you know who gave the orders?”

  “They didn’t know. They said that the answer can be found at the laboratory Ultra 3X.” McIntyre said. He then had the look that all combat veterans know – the thousand yard stare.

  “I hate to ask you… but what happen to everyone?”

  “One month after we got there… everybody was killed by…” McIntyre said as he broke down and cried. Mad Dawg then comfort him and McIntyre said, “I was all alone.”

  Eight minutes later Mad Dawg got a call from the EOD Chief of Engineering who said that he needed to see him. (The engineer was on Galactic Prime.) Strangely enough Mad Dawg didn’t want to go over to his own ship. He didn’t know why until he saw his ship, he realized that he will never see it again. He then wished that his baby girl (his ship) would have a formidable captain.

  “What did you wanted to see me about?” Mad Dawg asked the Chief Engineer.

  “I just wanted to let you know sir that everything is fixed, minus the obvious, on your ship. My team and I would have been finished sooner but we had trouble with the computers.”

  “Like what?”

  “The problem with both Marine and Space Core computers are that, they are easy to take apart, but they’re one sonofabitch to put back together again sir.”

  “Why didn’t you use a EOD computer then?”

  “We couldn’t sir.”

  “Is it that you were ordered not to.”

  “No sir. EOD computers are not compatible with either Marine and/or Space Core computers.”

  “Why? What is it, the design of the CPU, or something?”

  “Yes sir. The EOD CPU uses a different type of assembly programming language which makes it incompatible with the mother board of any computer other than a EOD one.”

  “So even if you took the mother board out and put it into either a Marine and/or Space Core computer it still wouldn’t work?”

  “Yes sir. All computer components rely upon the CPU because of the system bus.”

  “The what?”

  “The system bus connects to the CPU and the other components of a computer, such as the keyboard, RAM memory, mouse, etc.”

  “Why didn’t you send me a message telling me all of that?”

  “Because I thought that you might want to be here when we reactivate the computers sir.”

  ‘Why would you think that?”

  “Because it’s your ship sir.”

  “Well then, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome sir.”

  “Alright fire it up.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mad Dawg truly appreciated what the engineer did, but it didn’t change the way in which he felt. His ship is being fixed up for someone else and now he must learn to let go. Although he doesn’t own the ship, in his heart he does. So it hurts him to let the ship go. With him learning to let go of his ship it is teaching him to do the same with his daughter.

  Mad Dawg had no reaction when the ship computers were brought back online. He only left and went to his quarters on the ship to retrieve his belongings. After he collected his belongings he headed back to the, The Hammer of Doom and immediately headed to his assigned quarters there. While he was en route to his assigned quarters he got a call telling him to come to the Conference Room on the bridge. Because the call came from Captain Maxwell Mad Dawg knew that his mission was fixing to begin. He put away his belongings and then headed to the Conference Room and like he thought, he was told to prepare for his mission. He stayed there for awhile studying all Intel and tactics. When he finished he left to talk with his personnel as they were preparing for their mission. Mad Dawg felt weird when he saw his people dressed in those EOD uniforms.

  “Captain Dawson, this is Captain Maxwell. A unit is coming to take over. The code phrase is, ‘The one thing not mentioned is: a new life makes others weak in the knees.’ The response phrase is, ‘Our strength will forever shine on.’” Captain Maxwell informed Captain Dawson. Maxwell then had the call discontinue since procedures dictated that Captain Dawson did not have to respond.

  “Captain Burton, I am Senior Ensign Jeffers. My team and I have been assigned to assist you and your men.”

  Jeffers is of British decent who, on his father’s side, have ancestors who served in the British military as far back as WW1. He was born on a British space colony and when he was twelve a unknown alien race attack and tried to wipe out the colony. Out of a population of at least 1,100, only 23 survived. An EOD military unit found what was left of the survivors in a church. Jeffers was the only survivor of his family. The only thing that he had left of his family was a photo album depicting his paternal lineage in the military. An EOD officer adopted Jeffers and, although Jeffers wanted to take on the last name of his adopted family, the officer told him that he should keep his last name to honor his paternal lineage service in the military.

  Jeffers’ personnel included twenty-five men, five women and eight Dragon Clones. Jeffers’ had to go with Mad Dawg since Captain Dawson would recognize him. The Dragon Clones had to come along in order to, “level the playing field.” Mad Dawg, along with his Marines, suspected that the only reason why Jeffers was coming with them is to make certain that they don’t pull a fast one on them.

  “That was never part of my boys training.” Mad Dawg said in a suspicious tone of voice.

  “My team and I will not be getting in your way sir.”

  “Yeah I bet. Is it that you are tagging along to make certain that we fulfill our side of the bargain?”

  “Permission to speak freely.”

  “Granted.”

  “I don’t like this anymore than you do sir. But I don’t have a choice in the matter. I wouldn’t want to tag along with you and your personnel anymore than you with me and mine. I guess it’s lack of trust on both sides. I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me. But my duty tells me to push aside my feelings and cooperate with you. And that’s what I’m going to do.” Jeffers said. Mad Dawg didn’t say anything because he knew that Jeffers is right.